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A court with a measure of mercy: Fiorito

Drug Treatment Court is where some offenders are offered a calculated deal: clean up and we’ll keep you out of jail; stay clean, and you won’t get a criminal record. The deal comes with supports, as well as duties and obligations.

The larger point is that this approach saves lives, makes communities safer, slashes petty crime and eases the pressure on policing. It is one of the best things we do.

But it is not the only best thing — there are two other diversionary courts, sometimes referred to as therapeutic courts, where the light of the law shines through a lens of the clearest understanding:

Gladue Court is meant for aboriginal offenders, and Mental Health Court is precisely what you think it is.

Justice Maryka Omatsu has presided over each of the three therapeutic courts at one time or another. She is partially retired now, and she offered to show me around the latter two courts recently. Short of committing a crime, it looked like the best way to get an insider’s look.

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Why does she think these courts are important? She said, “We see the same people time and time again, a revolving door. There has to be an alternative. It’s easy to see the cause, if it’s mental health or addiction. Usually, there is homelessness involved; we see people who need ID, support workers, doctors.”

In other words, these courts are a last chance for us to address the most complex, and the most compelling problems in society; or rather, our failure to address these problems.

And so, on a bright cold morning, Justice Omatsu led me through Old City Hall. She introduced me to Jorge Zelaya, a mental-health court worker. It was early and he was already swamped, but we found two chairs in a room where there was too much paper on too many desks stuck too closely together.

Jorge is a social worker, of sorts. His job? “We talk to the Crown, to the victims. Will this be a trial, or a diversion? Because we’re not going to help the person in jail.” Jail, as you might imagine, is the last place on earth for someone who is mentally ill and whose crime is relatively minor.

He said, “Our role is to reintegrate clients into the community. It can take months — not just the court system, but the aftercare. Are people doing well? Do they have secure housing and support? It takes time.” He took a breath.

“We’re not just dealing with the legal system. We’re dealing with the health care system. The waiting list for care management, for housing — it can take six months or a year to get services; if there are no shelter beds, sometimes we have to stick people in jail. In jail, it can be hard to get medications. And sometimes, people aren’t fit to understand the process.”

There — right there — is the best argument of all for improving our shelter system, adding to our stock of social housing, and beefing up all of our assisted-living programs.

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Jorge, who had more urgent things to do than talk to me, said, “We’re doing crisis intervention. It’s almost like a factory. You have to move people fast.” We shook hands. He moved fast.

Justice Omatsu then led me along a corridor and said, by way of comparison, “Drug treatment court is two afternoons a week a week; mental health court is every day.” And that speaks volumes.

In truth, however, all the therapeutic courts are underfunded and also overcrowded, and there are waiting lists where there should not be any waiting.

Justice Omatsu then walked me over to the Gladue Court. It is so-called after a Supreme Court ruling which established that the legal system, in dealing with aboriginal offenders, is required to take into account the effects of 400 years of colonization.

She whispered as we took a seat. “Gladue Court is twice a week, two full days; anyone who self-identifies as aboriginal can go.”

A few people painfully waited for friends or family to show up, and then a handsome man, all bone and sinew and ponytail, stood before the court. The judge peered at a file and asked the man how he was doing. It was not an idle question. The man said, “Pretty good.” The judge said he was glad, and he said that he looked forward to seeing the man again.

And that’s the way it works: the man checks in on a regular basis; if all goes well, at the end of his program he will appear before a community council of elders, victims, family and others.

You need not know his crime. You do need to now that I saw him afterwards, alone on a bench, checking his phone. So I asked him if the requirement to check on a regular basis in was a pain in the butt. He smiled. “My mum put up $500 bail, so . . .” His smile was a complexity — he knew he should not have disappointed his mum in the first place; he was surely not going to stiff her out of bail money. How does he feel about the process? “They’re fair to me.” That’s all anyone can ask.

By chance, a few moments later, I saw the presiding judge and put a question to him, saying, “I don’t think of Gladue Court as a therapeutic court . . . it’s a way to give respect to identity, and to afford restorative justice to people who have undergone centuries of colonial rule.”

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